Were I to enumerate the riots, the sedition of the famished, and the pillaging of storehouses, I should never end; these are the convulsive twitching of exhaustion; the people have fasted as long as possible, and instinct, at last, rebels.  In 1747,[12] “extensive bread-riots occur in Toulouse, and in Guyenne they take place on every market-day.”  In 1750, from 6 to 7,000 men gather in Bearn behind a river to resist the clerks; two companies of the Artois regiment fire on the rebels and kill a dozen of them.  In 1752, a sedition at Rouen and in its neighborhood lasts three days; in Dauphiny and in Auvergne riotous villagers force open the grain warehouses and take away wheat at their own price; the same year, at Arles, 2,000 armed peasants demand bread at the town-hall and are dispersed by the soldiers.  In one province alone, that of Normandy, I find insurrections in 1725, in 1737, in 1739, in 1752, in 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767 and I768,[13] and always on account of bread.

“Entire hamlets,” writes the Parliament, “being without the necessities of life, hunger compels them to resort to the food of brutes. . . .  Two days more and Rouen will be without provisions, without grain, without bread.”

Accordingly, the last riot is terrible; on this occasion, the populace, again masters of the town for three days, pillage the public granaries and the stores of all the communities. — Up to the last and even later, in 1770 at Rheims, in 1775 at Dijon, at Versailles, at St. Germain, at Pontoise and at Paris, in 1772 at Poitiers, in 1785 at Aix in Provence, in 1788 and 1789 in Paris and throughout France, similar eruptions are visible.[14] — Undoubtedly the government under Louis XVI is milder; the intendants are more humane, the administration is less rigid, the taille becomes less unequal, and the corvée is less onerous through its transformation, in short, misery has diminished, and yet this is greater than human nature can bear.

Examine administrative correspondence for the last thirty years preceding the Revolution.  Countless statements reveal excessive suffering, even when not terminating in fury.  Life to a man of the lower class, to an artisan, or workman, subsisting on the labor of his own hands, is evidently precarious; he obtains simply enough to keep him from starvation and he does not always get that[15].  Here, in four districts, “the inhabitants live only on buckwheat,” and for five years, the apple crop having failed, they drink only water.  There, in a country of vine-yards,[16] “the wine-growers each year are reduced, for the most part, to begging their bread during the dull season.”  Elsewhere, several of the day-laborers and mechanics, obliged to sell their effects and household goods, die of the cold; insufficient and unhealthy food generates sickness, while, in two districts, 35,000 persons are stated to be living on alms[17].  In a remote canton the peasants cut the grain still green and